Prompts for Nonprofits: Meeting Notices, Minutes, and Grant Applications

The treasurer of a badminton club opens his computer on a Sunday evening. He has to write the notice for the general meeting, type up the minutes of the last board meeting, and finish a grant application for city hall. He does all this in his spare time, on top of a job, with no one having prepared him for it.

AI can take the formatting and the first draft off volunteers' hands, provided they supply the decisions and the facts. What binds the organization, such as deadlines and voting rules, stays in the bylaws and the law, not in a draft.

A notice that follows your bylaws

Your bylaws say how and when to give notice. The notice period, the method of sending, the quorum: you rely on them, not on the AI. Paste them into the prompt.

You are helping the secretary of a nonprofit write a notice for the ordinary general meeting.

Here is the article of the bylaws concerning general meetings:
[PASTE THE ARTICLE]

Information: name of the organization: [NAME]. Date: [DATE]. Time: [TIME]. Place: [PLACE]. Agenda: [ITEMS].
What members must bring: [PROXY, DUES PAID, ETC.]

Write the notice in 200 words maximum, cordial tone. State the notice period and the method of notice as they appear in the article. Add a proxy form template at the end of the message. If a point in the bylaws is ambiguous or an element is missing, list it separately instead of making it up.

Count the days between sending and the meeting by hand. If you doubt the validity of a decision, check with your federation or the office that supports nonprofits in your town.

Minutes from scattered notes

Notes taken during a meeting look like "budget ok, Marc checking on jerseys, tournament Mar 14 ??". AI turns them into readable minutes, provided it's told not to tidy anything up.

Here are my notes from the board meeting of [DATE]. Present: [FIRST NAMES]. Excused: [FIRST NAMES].

[PASTE YOUR NOTES AS THEY ARE]

Write the minutes in four sections: decisions made, actions to take (who, what, by when), points left open, next meeting.
Use only my notes. When a name or a date is missing for an action, write "to be specified" instead of guessing. Do not turn a "we'll see" into a decision.

Without the "to be specified," the AI assigns the task to the first person mentioned. Reread the result with your notes in front of you. A reusable prompt template saves you from rewriting everything at each meeting.

A grant application that talks about the project

Funders read a lot of applications. The one that holds attention presents a precise need, an action, and what can be observed at the end. Yours is probably already in your head and in your emails.

I need to write the "project presentation" section of a grant application to [FUNDER: CITY HALL, COUNTY, FOUNDATION...].

The organization: [NAME, YEAR FOUNDED, NUMBER OF MEMBERS, ACTIVITY]
The need we observed: [OBSERVED FACT, E.G. 12 CHILDREN FROM THE NEIGHBORING SCHOOL ASKED FOR A SLOT AND WE COULDN'T TAKE THEM]
The project: [WHAT WE WILL DO, WHERE, WHEN, WITH WHOM]
Budget: [ITEMS AND AMOUNTS]
What we will be able to measure at the end: [VERIFIABLE INDICATORS]

Write this section in 300 words, without nonprofit jargon. Describe the action before the ambition. Only cite the figures I gave you. Do not invent any partner, past result, or national statistic.

What you write, you will have to justify in the final report: check that every sentence matches what the organization will really do. Also paste in the funder's criteria, which they often publish.

Member lists, with names, addresses, and phone numbers, are personal data: keep them out of the tool and use initials in the notes (the precautions).

To get started, take your last minutes and the notes that preceded them, run them through the second prompt, and compare with what you wrote by hand.